The Sydney Scroungers
by FeatherWriter
Summary: A group of outcasts come together in Sydney to try to pull off some of the most daring heists in the this side of the equator, and all under the shadow of the Sydney Shatterdome. With a new Marshal in charge, set on cleaning up the territory, and a strange new sect of Kaiju cultists on the rise, this unlikely set of companions must face the odds if they're going to succeed!
1. Prologue: Sylvie Mansen 2019

Sylvia Mansen's hands shook as she fitted the protective plates on the pilot suit, feeling them lock into place. She'd done this many times before, suiting up before locking into the piloting simulators, but somehow it felt entirely different here. She checked the suit over one last time, trying to distract herself from what she was about to do.

Not to mention what she'd just done. _Don't go there, _she thought. _You'll deal with it later._

Part of her was yelling that she should give this up now, sneak out and abandon this crazy idea before she did something she'd regret even further. But she might never have a chance like this again. One of Vulcan Specter's pilots, Carrie James, had been injured in a training exercise and Vulcan was grounded until a replacement pilot could be found. There was no active maintenance on the Jaeger and it was just sitting there, unused and put on hold. Practically begging Sylvie to come and try it out.

It was the middle of the night, the pilots asleep, and no one around Vulcan Specter's hangar but a few security patrols. Sylvie's passcard let her avoid most of their rounds, using restricted passages to get almost all the way to Vulcan without meeting a soul. _That 'almost' cost you more than you'd bargained for._ She pushed the thought down. She couldn't go back now.

Sylvie stepped into the cockpit, pulling on the pilot's helmet. She heard a small beep as the helmet's comm system connected with the cockpit, and through it, the command center. "Vee, do you read me? How do things look up on the bridge?"

A moment later, the electronic voice of Syl-V came through, Sylvie's hand-programmed AI. "Contact established. All systems appear operational. Security systems are on standby, though they're throwing me some error messages. I don't think the command computer likes that I'm in here. I take it that you made it safely then?"

She suppressed the memory that tried to rise up at the question. Despite her nerves and anxiety, hearing Syl-V's voice made her feel a bit better. Talking to the AI almost always had that effect. Linking Syl-V to the command console had been her first stop of the night, and the easiest part of the plan. "Yep, I'm in. I'm going to go hook your double up to the second pilot's interface."

"I still feel it's rather unfair that I will not be the one piloting with you." Syl-V's voice processor didn't have much in the way of emotional variation, but Sylvie knew the AI well enough to recognize the frustration and slight jealousy in the words. She knew _she_ would be jealous if Vee was piloting a Jaeger without her, and she and Syl-V were - for all intents and purposes - the same person.

"Look, Vee," Sylvie said, carefully attaching wires to the neural inputs. She tried to ignore the shakiness still in her hands. "I need someone running the bridge and I need someone piloting the Jaeger with me. That means I've got to have two of you - or if we want to get technical, three of me. Us. Whatever. I need a full, undistracted Syl-V working on the Jaeger with me, all the processing power she's got. And that means you can't do both at the same time. Don't worry, I've got a memory drive for her here. We'll record the experience and sync back up with you later in the drift."

"Drift memories are not the same as actual memories," the synthesized voice said.

"Vee, you're an AI," Sylvie pointed out. "All of your memories are drift memories. _My_ memories to be precise. Besides, as soon as you sync with this pilot Syl-V, it'll be like you were in here the whole time. Honestly, if anyone has the right to complain, it's me. The last time I had two of you running at the same time, you nearly drove me crazy." She stepped back from the console, checking that all the inputs were attached. "I think we're good in here. I'm gonna fire her up and then we'll see if we can't get this Jaeger up and running."

She turned on the tablet computer hooked to the second pilot's space, the screen and buttons glowing as it came to life. It took about a minute to completely wake up. She heard another beep in her helmet as the small tablet computer synced with the second pilot's comm system.

"Syl-V, online and operational." The synthetic voice was exactly the same as the Syl-V running in the command center. Sylvie hadn't thought about that. It could get confusing quickly if she couldn't tell the two of them apart.

"Welcome to Vulcan Specter, Vee." Sylvie said, knowing that the AI she'd just turned on wouldn't know what was going on. The last thing she would remember was being put to sleep back in Sylvie's lab about an hour ago after they'd decided on the plan of attack. "As we discussed, you're running simultaneously with a version of you in the command center's computer, so to keep things straight, you're V2 and she's V1. Speaking of which, V1, can you alter your voice software to differentiate? V2's tablet doesn't have the capability, and you're hooked to a full computer. Pitch down 20 hertz please?"

The voice from the command center was already lowered when V1 responded. "Accepting designation: V1. Vocal change confirmed. Is this change enough to tell us apart?"

Sylvie nodded, though she knew the AI couldn't see. "Sounds good. V2, are you operational?"

The higher pitched voice spoke. "Accepting designation: V2. The system is responding to test protocols. I recognize the piloting interface. We're actually in the Jaeger? I take it you made it safely then?"

"Don't sound so surprised," Sylvie said, a bit more harshly than she'd intended. She pushed down the memory that question triggered yet again. V2 couldn't know that V1 had said exactly the same thing earlier. "I said I'd get us in. That's all there is to it. "

She stepped into her pilot's spot, feeling the supports clamp around her boots. There was a weight to the Jaeger's controls, a solidity that the simulator just couldn't compare to. A deep hum started beneath her as V1 fired up Vulcan Specter's engines. She could feel the vibrations in her whole body. All of a sudden, this was all very real. Her anxiety fled in a moment of pure, incredible excitement. "V2, you ready to pilot a real Jaeger?"

"I was made for this," V2 replied. Sylvie detected a hint of humor in the double meaning of the words.

"Could you please attempt not to rub it in?" V1 asked over the speakers. "It's bad enough that I am stuck babysitting this basic OS. I would prefer to do so without hearing the two of you gloating from the cockpit."

There was a slight smugness to V2's response. "It's not my fault I ended up in here and you did not. It was simple chance."

"Hey, cut it out. Both of you," Sylvie snapped, her thrill dampened by their arguing. "I don't know how long we've got, so let's get in and get out. The last thing I need is you two bickering the whole time. In half an hour you'll be the same person again when I sync you, and then you'll feel silly for fighting with yourself." She paused, frowning. "Although, if anyone is to feel silly about fighting with themselves, I suppose it'd be me."

Both of the Syl-Vs answered her together. "No arguments on that."

"I hate it when you do that. Remind me not to run two of you at the same time ever again." She checked the connections on her suit one last time. "V1, I'm hooked up. Let's do this."

"Reading your vitals here," V1 said. "Activating the Jaeger interface."

The heads up display flared to life; readouts, stats, and system information glowing on the screens in front of her. The holographic pilot's controls appeared, hovering over her left arm and leg like futuristic armor. A similar set flickered into existence where the second pilot's right arm and leg would be, but there was nothing more than V2's wires inside them.

"Okay, switch over to single," Sylvie said.

"Dual-hemispheric pilot control disabled. Override set to Single-pilot control," V1 said. The right side interface appeared on Sylvie, mirroring her left side interface and giving her a full body set of controls. V2's piloting spot looked dark with only the auxiliary interface glowing there.

This was what Sylvie had worked so hard to perfect, and now she finally had a chance to test it. A single human pilot, in complete control of a Jaeger. A matched AI copying her every move and alleviating the strain of the neural connection. They'd run hundreds of simulations, perfecting the technique. It would work now. It had to. She'd come too far for it to fail.

"Let's do this," she said, smiling for the first time since she'd entered the cockpit. It was finally happening.

"Initiating Neural Handshake," V1 said.

Sylvie felt the drift pull on her mind, and she didn't fight it, letting the technology pull her in. She felt Syl-V's familiar presence join her in the headspace, and a series of memories rushed past. Her childhood, her school, training in the piloting program, working in her lab. Smells, touches, emotions, and images. Glimpses of moments that were gone as quickly as they appeared, but all familiar. All hers. Syl-V's memories were an exact duplicate of her own. Every sensation had a sense of rightness, as one of them would pull it up, and the other would recognize it. They came and went in ceaseless succession, and the flow of them quickly faded into the back of Sylvie's mind.

"Neural Bridge at full capacity. Initiating Jaeger control." The words from the command were distant, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere in the rushing sensation of the drift.

Suddenly, Sylvie could feel the Jaeger beneath her, connected to both her and V2. It was like a second body, and her mind was filled with its innermost workings. She could activate its systems as effortlessly as she could move her own fingers, and V2 reacted exactly as she did, copying her thoughts and actions perfectly. She moved into a basic ready position, as she'd done time and time again in the simulator, her arms and the Jaeger's rising as one. She and V2 felt the thrill of success as one. She and V2 moved to the next stance, a defensive posture, crouched low with arms out, as if to grapple with a charging opponent.

But this stance triggered a new memory, and V2 latched on to this one, not letting it pass. Sylvie desperately tried to pull it away, to force it down, but this memory was new to Syl-V – from the time since their last drift together little over an hour ago – and she was curious. They never tried to hide things from each other, and concealing anything in the drift was all but impossible. V2 wanted to see what it was, and Sylvie's panicked response only made her curiosity more powerful.

"Careful! The Neural Bridge is failing. You are both phasing." V1's voice said, sounding worried. "How are you falling out of sync? What is going on in there?"

Sylvie tried to stay focused, but it was no use. The memory took over and suddenly she was back. The Jaeger and cockpit disappeared, and the memory swallowed her.

_Catwalk leading to the hangar. Fifteen minutes ago. She's sneaking, staying quiet. She's almost made it. Heavy footsteps behind her. A man, calling out. "Stop where you are!" Fear spikes, then adrenaline. She tries to run. He rushes to tackle her. Instinct takes over. Training kicks in. Defensive crouch, leg back, arms out. She grabs him, twisting and shifting without thought. Perfect execution. His head cracks against the railing. She drops him. He doesn't move. She doesn't check for a pulse. She runs. She can't go back._

Sylvie tried to pull herself free, but V2 held on tightly, the horrible memory playing over and over. New details kept appearing. _The feel of his shirt as her arms wrap around him. The sonorous clang as he strikes the rail, then the grated floor. Her heartbeat, pounding in her ears. _

Distantly, she felt the Jaeger move through the motions of grappling their remembered attacker, but there was no one for Vulcan Specter to grab. Within headspace, Sylvie could feel V2's shock and horror, the same emotions that she'd been trying to force down since it had happened.

_{What have you done?}_ V2's thought came across like an attack, in the indescribable wordless communication of headspace. _{What have we done? Did you/we kill him? Are you/we a murderer?}_

_{I don't know… I didn't mean to…}_ Sylvie felt the same questions rising within herself as the confrontation played over and over. She had tried not to think about it. She had thought she could deal with it later, outside the Jaeger, after they got through the test. She should have known that wouldn't work, that the drift would pull everything out.

_{What have you/we done? Are you/we a murderer? What have you/we done?} _The expressions were like a mental scream – rage, terror, horror and incomprehension twisting together in the mental onslaught.

The emotions welled up in Sylvie as well, all the things she didn't want to think about. She stopped fighting Syl-V's mental attack, her mind buckling as Syl-V's questions became her own. _{What have I/we done? Am/are I/we a murderer? What have I done? Am I a murderer? Did I kill that man? Who am I now? What will we do?}_

She felt a pressure build in her head and something like pain grew with it, but it seemed too far away to be relevant. Sounds rang in her ears, a voice saying something, but she couldn't make out the words. The memory flashed faster and faster. She felt herself collapsing inward as Syl-V's presence began to retreat from her headspace. They were too far out of sync, and she was losing control of the Jaeger now.

Suddenly, the drift evaporated, and she felt a sharp pain as the connection cut off, like it had been stretched taut and had snapped her as soon as it was released. The screens flickered for a moment before turning off and the piloting interface disappeared from her body. The hum of the Jaeger's engines fell into a moan as they slowed, then stopped.

She slumped forward and the now-inoperative piloting restraints released, letting her fall to the floor. Bright red letters across the screen spelled out "Manual Command Center Override. Vulcan Specter: Offline."

They were the last thing she saw before blacking out.


	2. Foreword and Introduction

**Foreword by the Author**

First of all, that title is misleading, because – as I am about to explain – I am not the "author" of this story. What you are about to read is an adaptation of a FATE Core Roleplaying campaign, set in the Pacific Rim universe. This campaign is conducted over Skype and I have taken it and adapted it to flow as a single narrative story. I am a single player in this campaign, and the inputs of others belong to them.

**I DO NOT TAKE CREDIT FOR MOST OF THE STORY OR CHARACTERS IN THIS WORK. ASIDE FROM MY OWN CHARACTER AND MINOR EDITS FOR NARRATIVE FLOW, THIS WORK IS A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT AND BELONGS TO OUR GROUP. **

First, these characters have backstories that were developed by the group together. All players and the GM are aware of most of the details of these backstories. If you would like to read an in-depth look at how all of these characters know each other and their pasts – as well as the Aspects that are shaping them because of those events – you may ask me for the link to our combined character sheets.

Secondly, because of the nature of the FATE Core system, this story will be written in **third person omniscient with present tense**. I realize that that's not a popular narrative style right now, but due to how the campaign works, it's the easiest way to tell this story. The "narration" will be inside the heads of all five of our player characters, as well as some NPCs, simultaneously, and this will happen in present tense. I'm adapting straight from our logs, so if a certain sentence is from a character's point of view, chances are their player wrote it. If you can't handle that kind of narration, I'd suggest that you not read this story. (But you might want to give it a shot. You'll get used to it quicker than you think.)

Now for those that I haven't scared off yet, here's some info you might want to know before diving in:

**Setting**

The story takes place in Sydney, Australia, circa 2020. The Player Characters (PCs) are members of Sydney's Underground and tend to get involved in heist jobs – especially those involving Kaiju or the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC). This tends to cause trouble for the local Shatterdome, especially the new Marshal who was just transferred there and is looking to clean up some of the security issues surrounding the city.

There's also been a strange new trend of Kaiju worshippers, calling themselves The Assembly of True Judgment. How and why this new group has arisen is unclear, but they've started going after the same Kaiju bounties that the PCs are targeting, and that's going to be a problem if it continues.

**Characters and Players  
**(Player names are followed by their tumblr URL.)

**Game Master – Gavin (abalidoth)**  
Gavin runs the campaign. Any writing that has to do with scenery, setting, or NPCs – you can guess that he's responsible for those passages. While occasionally one of the players may spend a Fate Point to add a detail to a scene or something, most of the time it's all him.

**Sylvie Mansen – created and played by Alyx (featherwriter/alwaysanothersecret)  
**Sylvie is an AI programmer who used to work for the PPDC, until she got caught sneaking into Vulcan Specter's hangar after-hours and nearly killed herself in a piloting attempt. She has programmed an AI copy of herself – known as Syl-V – who serves as her co-pilot for any drift sessions. However, an unexpected memory caused the drift session to fail. Thankfully, **Miranda Cross** found her and shut the Jaeger down in time to save Sylvie's life. In her haste to flee however, Sylvie left a copy of Syl-V still connected to the Jaeger… a literal duplicate of Sylvie's mind and one which harbors a dark secret. Thankfully, her good friend **Eleanor Cartier** was able to put her in touch with **Katie Horner, **who helped her go to ground. Now, about a year later, she's starting to get used to life working illegal heist jobs in the underground with the others while trying to hide from the authorities who still have a warrant out for her arrest.

(Sylvie's backstory in narrative form can be found in the prologue before this.)

**Miranda Cross – created and played by Emma (lunarubato)  
**Miranda is a freelance Jaeger mechanic, and the only member of the heist group still employed by the PPDC. However, that doesn't mean she doesn't like making a little money on the side from the occasional job in the underworld. About a year ago, she found **Sylvie Mansen **trying to pilot Vulcan Specter on her own without authorization and shut the drift down, but more interesting was the program calling itself "Syl-V" that Miranda found in the cockpit. The only person she told about it was **Seiko Watanabe **who was crashing on her floor at the time, though he's since moved on and she hasn't heard from him in a while. Even after working with the actual Sylvie on some underworld jobs, she hasn't confessed that she still has this rogue version of Sylvie's AI. She's also close to **Eleanor Cartier**, from back when they both worked at PPDC, and isn't too happy with those who drove her friend out.

**Seiko Watanabe – created and played by Elise (swamp-spirit)  
**Seiko's worked outside the law nearly all his life, stealing and scamming the money he needs – for himself and his younger siblings. He's made it a bit of a trend, he cuts himself off from those he has to provide for, not letting himself get attached. It happened with his siblings, and it happened with **Miranda Cross**, who took him in when he first arrived at Sydney. He's cut ties with her now – but not before taking a look at the strange AI she had, and finding a rather nasty piece of blackmail about someone named **Sylvie Mansen**. After moving out of Miranda's apartment, he ran into **Eleanor Cartier **while apartment-searching, and when she started poking into his history, he found she reminded him of someone he'd once cared for.

**Eleanor Cartier – created and played by Emmalyn (emmalyn)  
**Once a psychoanalyst for potential Jaeger pilots in the PPDC, Eleanor left the program after an incident with one of her reports a few years ago. She'd felt this recruit was borderline-sociopathic, but he was accepted despite her warning, and an anonymous threat demanding she retract her statements convinced her it was time to get out. She knows just about everyone there is to know, maintaining contact with **Sylvie Mansen **and **Miranda Cross** after leaving the PPDC, starting a friendship with **Katie Horner **in a back-alley bar, and even winning over the normally cold **Seiko Watanabe **while they both looked for a place to stay a few months back.

**Katie Horner – created and played by Heather (eshonai)  
**Katie is an aspiring Kaijuologist and adrenaline junkie with far too much money for her own good. The heiress to an oil empire, she quickly learned that a little money in the right place could get her just about anything she wanted – and what she wanted was to see Kaiju. Her first stunt – got her kicked out of college, but the thrill hooked her. Since moving to Sydney, she became good friends with **Eleanor Cartier **and helped **Sylvie Madsen **disappear after her now-infamous Jaeger joyride. She's hired **Miranda Cross **for some heist jobs, as well as the other two whenever she needed their skills. Now after hearing that an old contact from Tokyo, **Seiko Watanabe**, is in town as well, she's asked him to join her team as well. They've helped her get ahold of some of the most restricted Kaiju objects in Sydney, and she's paid them well to do it.


	3. Session 1

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU READ THE FOREWOD AND INTRODUCTION BEFORE STARTING THIS STORY. IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THAT YET, YOU WILL PROBABLY BE CONFUSED BY WHO THESE CHARACTERS ARE.**

It's February 2021, a relatively mild summer by Sydney standards. The Kaiju war rages on around the Pacific; the Jaegers, once thought invincible, are starting to show cracks in their armor.

It's a tense time. Around every hole-in-the-wall bar in Sydney, there is talk about the future of the war, the effectiveness of the Jaegers, and the madness that is the Anti Kaiju Wall project, just now in its preliminary construction on both sides of the Pacific.

In this milieu, there is an event that would once have been unthinkable, but has become prosaic: A Kaiju attack.

Ironsides, a stocky Category II Kaiju, trundled out of the breach on a lazy Sunday morning and made its way towards Sydney, making landfall about a hundred miles north-northeast of the city proper. It crashed along the New South Wales coastline, quickly encountering the Australian Jaeger Echo Saber.

One of the most brutal Kaiju fights to date ensued. Ironsides, true to name, was a tough beastie; Echo Saber was able to put it down, but at a heavy mechanical toll. The Mark-4 won't be fighting any Kaiju for a while yet; in its place, standing sentinel over Australia, are Vulcan Specter and the newly commissioned Striker Eureka.

A week has passed since the attack, and the city is still abuzz. Newsfeeds on storeroom TVs are showing helicopter footage of the fight, still, and the country collectively winces at the sight of Ironsides tearing ragged metal chunks out of Echo Saber's side.

But in the Sydney underworld, a different kind of buzz is happening. According to rumor, something very important fell off of either the Kaiju or the Jaeger in their melee royale. The PPDC, it is said, are looking for it far and wide.

But Katie Horner wants to find it first.

The four people she's contacted individually find their way to the designated meeting place: a fairly ritzy nightclub in Sydney. Neither too far on the black-tie end of the spectrum or the throbbing bass music side. Just average enough to be inconspicuous. It's still early, just after opening, and things haven't really started to ramp up yet.

As each of the four arrive, they each find places to sit. Sylvie Madsen, Miranda Cross, and Eleanor Cartier all find a booth together in the back, but Seiko Watanabe decides to keep an eye on them from a distance until Katie arrives. However, their would-be employer is nowhere to be seen...

Sylvie sits quietly, only occasionally glancing up from her phone at the others. Katie's messsage about a new job wasn't exactly what she'd wanted to get, especially since she has a feeling it had to do with that awful Kaiju that had just been put down and she isn't looking forward to that. Messing around on the internet on her phone to distract herself seems like the best idea for now.

Across the table, Eleanor is sipping her overpriced chocolate martini and trying not to be noticeable in her several-years-outdated dress.

The final occupant of the table is Miranda, who has been mostly ignoring the people at the table. She's been looking around for any signs of Katie, but has yet to see any sign of her.

Seiko keeps his distance, but watches the group at the table carefully. He doesn't order anything other than a water – thinking that it makes him look mysterious. He also reminds himself that he can't really afford anything on the menu. Hopefully whatever Katie has called them all together for can change that. The girl's always paid well in the past.

The three women in the booth fall into a sort of awkward silence, none really knowing how to start up a conversation. Eleanor guesses that they're all wondering the same thing: What could have been in Katie's invitation to him that would make everyone want to come out like this so soon after an attack?

Eleanor remembers seeing someone that looked like Seiko sitting near the dance floor, but...No, it couldn't be him. She figures even the tastiest scoop (with the possibility of real money attached) probably wouldn't be enough to drag him out from hiding. Probably.

A text message interrupts Sylvie's surfing, from Syl-V back in the lab.

**Syl-V: **_Are you being social at the meetup? You should talk to people._

Sylvie sighs and texts back, trying not to feel guilty that her AI is calling her out when she's not even there.

**Sylvie:** _No. We're just sitting here. I don't wanna say anything first._

**Syl-V:** _I would say something if I were there._

**Sylvie:** _No you wouldn't. Stop lying._

However, despite telling Vee that she was not going to be social, she glances up, looking at the others. "Has... um, has anyone heard from Katie yet?"

"Um. No, not yet," Eleanor says.

Miranda looks down at her phone briefly, then looks at the others at the table. "I haven't seen her."

Seiko watches the women at the table carefully. The club is quite loud so he's half tempted to join them while they wait, but as he is he's there for business, not socializing. He stays put, pouring himself another glass of water as he longingly eyes the menu.

A waitress comes by, raises an eyebrow at the extremely awkward table of three and the loner in the corner – not that she's not used to *his* type around here. She heads to the table with the man first, asking him if he'd like anything from the bar.

Seiko waves her away. "No, thank you. I'm waiting to meet somebody."

With a sigh, the waitress lowers her pad and moves on to the next table, the one with the three women. She repeats her question to them as well.

"No, thank you," Sylvie says first, though she thinks she might wish she had one later. At the moment though, she'd rather have all her wits about her.

"I'm alright," Eleanor murmurs. She's been nursing the same damn martini for a half an hour, she's not about to let the waitress ruin her mystique now.

Miranda ignores the woman at first, trying to get a good look at the man at the table next to them. He's doing a fairly good job of hiding his face, though, and she can't quite make him out in the nightclub's gloom. He looks a bit like Seiko, but she hasn't seen him in months, so she can't be sure. Finally, she turns her attention to the waitress. "Nothing for me, but send an appletini to the man at that table there, with my regards."

Another text causes Sylvie's phone to vibrate in her hand.

**Syl-V:** _If we sync up and I find out that you didn't try to be social, I will run high-end algorithms while I'm in the drift with you. Do you really want to go through that?_

Wincing, Sylvie puts her phone down again. Looking for a way to start up a conversation, she glances over her shoulder at the man in Miranda has just ordered a drink for. She doesn't recognize him. She turns back to Miranda, raising an eyebrow. "Are you flirting with strangers before Katie gets here?"

"Possibly." Miranda takes a drink from her water in a way she hopes seems mysterious.

A few moments later, the waitress brings the Seiko the drink. "Compliments of the lady over there, sir." Seiko pushes the drink away, but after a minute, he takes a surreptitious sip. Grimacing, he scoots it back and tries his best to look disdainful. Who would drink an appletini? Disgusting.

As Seiko frowns at his drink, a tall, fairly well chiseled man wanders up to the table with Miranda, Sylvie, and Eleanor. He's accompanied by two other men, who are staying back a bit and obviously showing him some deference. He's quite evidently been pre-gaming, as the club hasn't been open for long enough for him to have gotten quite as drunk as he so obviously is. "Well, hey there."

Sylvie blinks, shooting a look at her two companions. "Can we... um, help you, sir?"

Eleanor glares at the newcomer, willing him with her mind to walk away. "Did you want a drink? You can have mine," she drawls, voice dripping with disinterest. "I really don't want it."

"Naw, naw. 'Sh good. I was gonna ask you all if you wanted some... company, yanno?" He slurs the words, a sloppy grin on his face. Behind him, his friends start nodding as though he's just let the three women in on the big secret of existence.

"Our party's rather...full, at the moment. And not in a double-entendre way, either," Eleanor adds hastily. Should've ordered a less inviting drink, she thinks. Martinis are too flirty.

"Yeah, I... um, think we're good," Sylvie says, feeling terribly awkward. This is exactly why she usually stays out of places like this.

Miranda types at her phone, trying to project boredom towards the men, hoping they go away.

"Aw, c'mon. 'Snot like you were doin' nothin' anyway." His flat American vowels clash with the usual tenor of the bar. He grabs a chair from Seiko's booth without asking and noisily drags it across the floor.

Eleanor sniffs. "Well, it's not like you are anything, either."

"Um, I think it might be best if you leave." Sylvie says. "We're here to meet someone, okay?" Oh, Vee's gonna have a field day with this...

He sits down heavily in his stolen chair – he's the kind of person who is used to moving around drunk, but retains alcohol's usual clunkiness. If he understood the insults pointed at him, he's focused enough to ignore them. "I'm Rick. Jaeger pilot, y'know? Savin' the Earth and shit."

Eleanor's frown gets even darker. Oh goddammit, another wannabe Jaeger pilot…. "Look... sir... you really shouldn't be committing fraud in public like this," she says, an idea coming to her suddenly. "You realize that you're falsely impersonating a celebrity in front of a table of lawyers, don't you?"

Rick, if that really is his name, scrunches his forehead in a way that makes his eyebrows look wider. It's rather disconcerting. "Wait, I, uh, what?"

As the topic shifts to something Sylvie knows something about, she smiles. Meeting the drunken man's eyes, she tips her head in a mock-questioning manner, rattling off questions. "Oh, so you're a pilot? Which Jaeger do you run, exactly? Or did you mean to say that you're in the piloting program? What are your simulator stats? Drop-to-kill rate?"

He whips around to glare at Sylvie. "What the hell do you know, huh? I pilot, uh..." He looks down at the beer can his hand. "Pabst Crusher. In America. And I'm the best one there is at the Shattle Setterdome."

One table over, Seiko snorts quietly into his appletini.

Sylvie's tone is all-out mocking now. "Oh wow, it's so amazing that I've never heard of you before then. Or the 'Shattle Setterdome'. You wouldn't happen to have the specs and kill counts written down on that beer can that so conveniently shares your Jaeger's name, would you? I'm guessing not."

Eleanor addresses him even before he can react to Sylvie's attack. "Now really, Dick? That was your name, wasn't it? You really need to pick your audience better. Why don't you go home and think about that for a while. Think about the people here who don't want impersonators running rampant in our city, and what we might do to a squishy little guy like you."

Rick stands up, red in the face, looking like he's about to make an angry retort. Or possibly punch someone. Or maybe vomit, it's not really clear.

Miranda continues to type on her phone, finally looking up after him. Eleanor smiles triumphantly and finally, finally, takes a real sip of her drink. Sylvie gives him a small shrug, smiling confidently.

Rick eventually makes up his mind and, instead of doing any of those other things, just bursts into tears and runs out of the club. As he passes, Seiko slips from his booth and quietly follows him out. The man's two wingmen look at the women at the table in astonishment before hurrying after their friend.

Outside in the somewhat cramped alley, Seiko corners the still-sobbing man. The would-be Jaeger pilot is, it seems, a weepy drunk. "Excuse me sir," Seiko says smoothly. "Those ladies were kind enough not to press charges, but I'm a rather concerned citizen. In these dangerous times we can't allow blatant impersonation of our heroes to go unpunished, can we?"

After the verbal attack he's just received, Rick is hardly in a state to respond at the moment. He blubbers something incomprehensible, but seems inclined to acquiesce to whatever demands Seiko might make.

Seiko puts a stiff attempt at a comforting hand on his back. At that moment however, his two friends find them outside and quickly sidle up alongside the two of them. Seiko curses mentally; he'd forgotten about them.

"Hey! What are you doing?" One of them shouts.

Seiko puts on what he hopes is a disarming smile, turning towards them. He steps back from their emotionally compromised companion. "Ah. Your friend was about to get himself into a tight spot. I was just warning him away. He could end up in quite a bit of trouble in this state, you know. You should get him home."

They look suspicious, but eventually just grab either arm of their rather emotional compatriot and haul him out of the club, eyeing Seiko warily as they do so. After they've gone, Seiko scowls, bitter that he's returning to the club without even a little bit of the drunks' money. He'd been so close, too. He sulks back into the nightclub, dropping into his booth once more and knocking back the entire appletini. As dramatically has he can.

Back at the women's booth, Sylvie eyes her two companions for a moment, then starts laughing. "Okay, that was almost fun. Maybe I should come to places like this more often if telling off morons is involved."

Eleanor nods, laughing in a way that could be considered a giggle. If she weren't a "lawyer," of course. That thought inspires a truly lawyerlike snort.

Miranda allows herself to relax a bit as well. "I'll admit, your handling of him was quite impressive."

Sylvie shrugs, blushing a bit at the compliment. "I may not know much when it comes to seedy bars and such, but don't mess with me when it comes to the piloting program. I helped make half those simulators and I've fought through the other half. I'll take down drunk piloting posers any day."

Eleanor smiles a little in Sylvie's direction. "Nice off the cuff socializing, though," she says.

Even as the three begin to break the ice over their mutual enjoyment of shutting down lying drunks, Katie Horner walks into the club in a fedora and sunglasses. She spots the group at the booth, and sits down in one of the chairs Rick just vacated.

She gives the group a winning smile. "I see y'all were able to make it."

Miranda looks pointedly at Katie. "It's the middle of the night. Why are you wearing sunglasses?"

Seiko sighs as he sees Katie arrive, finally getting up and joining the others at the booth. Katie has even more money than the drunk guy and he's not planning on this night being a total loss. He takes a seat beside her, ignoring the looks he gets from Miranda and Eleanor. "Good evening Ms. Horner. It's a pleasure to see you."

Sylvie frowns at the newcomer, quizzically. "I don't think I know you. Have we met before?"

"No, I don't believe we have," Seiko says. With a slightly cruel twist, he adds: "though I feel like I've seen your face around? Somewhere in the news, perhaps? Perhaps you won a spelling bee as a child?"

Sylvie's eyes widen in alarm just a bit and she looks down quickly. "Oh, no… I think you're, uh, mistaking me for someone else. I don't think I've ever met you, so you couldn't know me."

Miranda kicks Seiko under the table.

Seiko doesn't outwardly react to the attack on his shins, but decides to let Sylvie off the hook. "Ah yes. I remember now. The programmer. I admire your work. I've worked with Ms. Horner in the past."

"As have I, as of late," Sylvie says, still feeling slightly embarrassed. "Nice to meet you, I guess, Mr. uh..."

Katie pulls of her sunglasses, glares at Miranda, and nods at Seiko. She answers Sylvie's question before he has a chance to. "Seiko Watanabe. He's a bit of a low-life but he knows his way around."

Sylvie gives Katie a quick can-I-trust-this-guy look, hoping she'll give a nod or something. Katie shrugs.

Eleanor notices the small exchange, and smiles slightly. "He's trustworthy, if that's what you're wondering," Eleanor says wryly. "By the way: Hi, Katie."

Seiko scoffs. "I'm really not."

Eleanor shrugs. "Well, close enough for the moment."

At Eleanor's comment, Sylvie starts, trying to back out of the comment. "Oh, I wasn't trying to..." The looks around the table quickly tell her no one is buying it. She sighs. "Well, I suppose it can't hurt much. I'm Sylvie. Sylvie Mansen."

"I know," Seiko says, inwardly enjoying Sylvie's reactions a bit more than he should. "Though I thank you for the introduction. Your work really is quite impressive. I'm always happy to be working around talent."

The programmer sighs heavily, feeling rather embarrassed at the whole ordeal. "Someday I'm going to get used to being slightly infamous, I swear. I'm surprised you've followed my work though. Thanks, I guess."

"Speaking of work," Katie says, deftly bringing the conversation back around, "let me get a drink and then we can talk business. Can I get any of y'all anything?"

"The usual," Seiko says smoothly. He mentally reviews his accent to make sure he doesn't start sounding Southern now that Katie's around as he claims to be an Australia native most of the time.

"I'll take a water, if you don't mind," Sylvie says, thinking having a drink to hide behind might be a good idea.

"I think I'll stick with my..." Eleanor looks at her neglected martini and sighs. "You know what, I'll take a water too. Maybe a salad for me, too," It would give her something else to mess with for a while, instead of having more real human interactions.

Miranda scans the menu for the most expensive item, knowing that Katie's picking up the tab. "One of these, if it's not too much trouble," she says, putting on a saccharine grin and pointing.

Katie calls a waitress over and orders the lot, plus an expensive beer for herself.

"So, Katie," Sylvie says once the waitress leaves. "What exactly is this job you've got for us? And why do I have the sinking suspicion that it involves that rotting Kaiju corpse that Echo took out?"

"I was hoping someone would ask that," Eleanor says with a conspiratorial smile. "Do you have some leads that I haven't heard about, Katie?"

Seiko looks vaguely annoyed, the first real expression he's shown since sitting down. He just can't understand Katie's obsession with the creatures. He'd been hoping that this job would just involve schmoozing. People are easy; Kaiju are repulsive.

"I don't know if y'all have heard the rumors," says Katie, taking a swig of her fancy beer, "but the PPDC lost something during the fight with Ironsides. And whatever it was, they want it back."

Sylvie leans forward. "Define 'lost.' And clarify 'something'?"

Eleanor waves a hand. "Oh, you know the PPDC, they lose things all the time." She decides not to mention that those "things" sometimes include people.

Miranda looks at Katie intently. "People are saying lots of things. What makes you sure this information is legitimate?"

"Well," Katie says, "it turns out a fishing boat managed to slip into the resticted area around the kill site. By accident, I'm sure. But someone on board had a video camera."

Eleanor narrowed her eyes. "Would this 'somebody' happen to be...open to persuasion? Perhaps of the monetary variety?"

"Or the loved ones variety?" Seiko suggests quietly.

Katie smirks at Eleanor, pretending she didn't hear Seiko's addition. "They were. It looks like the PPDC are trawling the area. They've got several ships out there."

Eleanor considers this, fighting the urge to steeple her fingers. She just barely succeeds in quashing it.

"Katie, what exactly is the thing?" Sylvie says, cursing Katie's sense of drama.

Seiko glances at the tables around them carefully. "Perhaps that's a conversation for elsewhere?"

"Ain't sure," she says, her excitement making her American South drawl more noticeable. "Did you see the news coverage of the big fight? Something fell in the fray. The publicly available video is too low-res to get a good idea what it was, though. I was actually hoping Miranda could help me with that."

Miranda shrugs slightly. "I may be able to find something out, but I'm curious as to why you care."

"You don't? Eleanor is genuinely surprised. "You do realize that a find like this could mean millions in the...alternative sector, right?" She doesn't say 'black market,' but it's pretty heavily implied.

"Of course I do," Miranda folded her arms on the table. "And I also realize that Ms. Horner isn't the usual sort of trader."

"I'm in," Seiko says bluntly. He keeps his reasons to himself.

"I could use hardware upgrades, and I'm curious about this 'something' that everyone's so worked up about. I'll help if you need me." Sylvie says.

"Lemme know if you need a shrink," Eleanor puts in, half-jokingly.

Miranda speaks up again, hesitant. "I'm simply curious as to what Katie's stake is here." Glancing at the others around the table, she sighs lightly. "But… this item needs to be found, so please, don't let me stop you."

Eleanor shrugs. "We can decide what to do with it if and when we find it. Sounds fair."

"Whatever 'it' is..." Sylvie points out.

"Yep." Eleanor jabs her fork into her salad. "I'm hoping it's a hunk of Kaiju. That would be great for my offshore bank account. Oh… did I say that out loud?" she adds to no one in particular.

Katie looks entirely pleased that her team is coming together. "So, the terms I'm proposing are: I'll finance the project, in exchange for an additional 10% of our total profits. We split the rest 5 ways."

"We 'lawyers' should be able to sort this out, right?" Eleanor asks, smiling around a mouthful of greens.

"And," Katie says, laying her full offer out, "I can front you each 10 grand, American money."

Sylvie takes a quick drink of her water to try to hide her eyebrows rising at the figure. It doesn't work very well. She sets the glass down again. "Well, I knew there was a reason I keep coming back to help with your jobs, Katie."

Eleanor swallows, noisily. "Sounds fair to me."

Seiko doesn't outwardly react to the offer. "It might be easier to pay us in Australian," he says. "Arouse less suspicion. It's not much of a difference. 12K in Australian."

"I can help make the switch," Eleanor says. "Give me 3 days."

"I'll see what I can do, as well," Miranda replies, sliding her hands under the table.

A thought occurs to Seiko. "Do we have a boat?"

Miranda pauses mid-bite, turning slowly to stare at him. "That... is an excellent question."

Eleanor and Sylvie both look to Katie. Eleanor slowly raises her eyebrows.

Katie grins. "We do."

Seiko nods and takes a sip of wine, outwardly calm, but on the inside, he's rather worried about the quality of said ship. He's not fond of water travel in the first place, and with a Kaiju involved, it's even worse. The things I do for money…

Eleanor had suspected that the kaijuologist would've had something up her sleeve. Or, she muses, on it. But that was not a conversation for the dinner table. "Good," she says.

"I really hope you've got wi-fi," Sylvie says. "I don't like being cut off for long periods of time. And Vee gets antsy and bored without the internet."

"If you've got the hardware, I could probably whip something up..." Sylvie immediately starts thinking up ways that they might be able to get a good enough signal to work. She'd figure something out.

"And when will our..." Seiko grimaces, "…cruise be taking place?"

"We will have wi-fi once someone gets it set up," Katie says.

"If you don't mind," Miranda cuts in. "I'd like to give the ship an inspection before this voyage takes place. I'd like to avoid sailing into a slick of kaiju blue without the proper preparations."

"That's a good plan," Eleanor says. "A very good plan."

"Well, I have some preparations to make," Seiko says, standing to leave. Business was settled and he didn't have any plans to stay and socialize. "Katie knows my contact information when things are ready."

"She's apparently got all of ours as well," Sylvie pointed out.

Seiko's move to exit prompts the others to do the same. Sylvie takes one last drink of her water, mind already working over the ways she might get wi-fi out on the water. Vee might have some ideas… Miranda stays quiet as she grabs her things to head out. Eleanor throws a wave over her shoulder as she departs. There may or may not be salad dressing on her coat. She isn't telling.

-To Be Continued-


	4. Session 2

**Scene 1**

A few days after the meeting at the club, at Sydney Harbor docks, around sunset, an outwardly shabby, but freshly painted, short-hop freighter bobs in the waves, gangplank extended. A group of five has gathered once more on the pier, looking up at the vessel they'll soon be boarding.

Seiko is dead pale looking at the shabby ship. He fights down the urge to throw up. Boats themselves are bad enough, but this one looks about ready to go under at the slightest touch.

Sylvie shoulders her all-too-heavy duffle bag. "This is it then? It's... not much to look at."

"It's sure...something," Eleanor says. The attempt at optimism falls a little flat thanks to the uncertain look on her face.

"It is most _definitely_ something." says Katie, slightly defensive of her ship. "Onboard wi-fi. About five different remote-sensing instruments. A fully-equipped laboratory. Plenty of hidden weapons and compartments. Quarters're a bit cramped, but we'll get used to it."

Miranda nods approvingly, confirming each of Katie's claims. "It's not the most glamorous ship, but from what I've seen, it should fit our needs quite well."

Eleanor's eyes steadily grow wider and wider. "I...could live with that."

Seiko, however, hears cramped quarters and begins almost imperceptibly backing away.

Katie glares around at the others. "So y'all stop complaining. I paid good money for this."

Sylvie shrugs, the motion shifting her pack again. "More to it than meets the eye, then? So long as there's wi-fi, I can make do."

"And I better be getting paid good money for this" Seiko mutters under his breath, gripping the handle on his rolling briefcase nervously.

Eleanor tosses Seiko a glance. "I think we already made some 'good' money," she says. "Unless your definition differs greatly from mine."

"Can we, uh, board, Katie?" Sylvie asks wincing. "Vee's hardware and the Pons are killing my shoulder over here, and I'd like to get everything hooked in and running if I can."

"May as well!" says Katie. "Just make yourself at home."

Sylvie gratefully starts up the ramp, "If anyone needs me, I'll probably be in the tech room, setting up."

Miranda moves to follow the programmer, but hesitates halfway aboard. "Does she have a name?" she asks, turning back.

Tranquility!" Katie says, beaming like a mother introducing one of her children.

"Ah," Eleanor murmurs, spotting a half-hidden "Tranq" under some rust on the hull. "Of course..."

"Hmm." Miranda turns back and walks the rest of the way aboard. "Well then, here's hoping she lives up to her name."

**Scene 2**

The group splits up once they're all aboard, each going to their own tasks or to simply explore.

Seiko wanders about the ship, inspecting as much of this waterlogged prison as he can. He stops at the bunkroom, feeling a dreadful anxiety begin to rise within him at the sight of the claustrophobic built-in beds. _Cramped quarters indeed. I think I'm going to be sick…_

Katie comes up behind Seiko and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Let's just make the captain's cabin the boys' quarters."

Seiko relaxes noticeably, but still looks rather displeased. Whether this is because he is still on a ship or because he just got called "boy" though, it's hard to say. The fact that Katie just touched his shoulder may be contributing as well.

He makes his way up to the cabin, pulling his suitcase behind him. After closing the door, he stands still for a while, just kind of awkwardly shifting trying to figure out which stance is least ocean-y feeling. He doesn't find any that help enough. Finally, with a sigh, he sits down on the bed and begins to go through his ten email accounts, all under different names. Then he thinks about the rust and touches up his will as well.

Nearby, Eleanor searches out the first aid kit. No point in dying of tetanus just because they were out in the middle of the ocean, fighting giant monsters. That would be a fit of universal irony that she wouldn't appreciate much. Finding everything satisfactory, she then digs out her rubber boat shoes and slips them on to go exploring.

The first thing Sylvie does is check out the router room, making sure that everything is hooked up the way she specified. She slides her bag off her shoulder, moving to inspect the wires and routers. Not finding any issues, she smiles, then decides to head up to the bridge to check out the tech there. On the way, she pulls out her phone, switching from service internet to the ship's wi-fi. Much to her relief, it connects.

Miranda heads below deck to double check the hull's integrity and make sure things were in ship-shape. Groaning internally at her own pun, she nonetheless didn't see any problems.

After seeing Seiko off to the captain's quarters, Katie does her best to observe everyone's reactions to the boat without hovering. After a little while, she wanders onto the bridge.

"Katie," Sylvie asks as she enters, inspecting the ship's hardware. It's far more impressive than she was expecting. "Do you mind if I set up my desktop in the router room? Vee's been in sleep mode for a few hours now, and I'd like to get her up and running if I can."

"Sure," says Katie. "Make yourself at home in there."

"Thanks."

Eleanor pops her head in a moment later. "Katie, I'm impressed that-oh, sorry." She cuts off as she notices that she seems to be interrupting a conversation.

"No worries," Sylvie says, moving for the door. "She's all yours, Eleanor. I was just leaving." She heads down to find the tech lab, hoping she can have all her computers set up within the hour. Hopefully by then they'll have cast off.

"Right. Well." Eleanor tosses Sylvie a half-smile on her way in. "Katie, what do you need for us to do to get this...ship...moving?"

"She's all fueled up and ready to go," says Katie. "Just need to chart a course and cast off."

Eleanor grins. "Wonderful. Need a champagne bottle, or are we covered?"

"Should be some in the galley," Katie says with a laugh.

Eleanor's grin widens and she ducks back out into the open air. _To the galley!_ she thinks, but doesn't say. Must maintain at least a semblance of professionalism. _Or is that mystery? Well, it's something at least._

Miranda climbs the rest of the way up the stairs, where she _most certainly_ wasn't hovering and listening to the conversation. She immediately heads over to a cabinet and pulls out a series of maps. If someone needs to chart a course, she figures she might as well give it a shot. She strews the papers about the floor and starts looking them over.

**Scene 3**

Syl-V's set up takes less time than Sylvie expected, so while the systems are connecting and booting up, her mind can't help but wander back up to the bridge. Some of the systems up there had looked intriguingly advanced and she's itching to go mess with them.

Finally she can't take it anymore. Before she goes, she pulls out her subvocal recognition patches. The two clear squares are a little less than an inch wide and sticky on one side. Using a mirror, she carefully sticks them on either side of her neck, making sure they're in the right place. The circuitry within them flashes with a blue light once as they connect to the computer, then fades to clear – making the patches almost invisible.

She mouths a few test words, making sure the computer can read her subvocalizing. The patches read the positions of her vocal cords and interpret those motions as words – without Sylvie ever needing to make a sound. The engineer she'd bought them from had called the technology 'synthetic telepathy,' which was such a cool name that she would have been tempted to buy it even if it wasn't so useful.

Everything seems to be working correctly, so as the final step, she begins booting up Syl-V's programming. As the AI loads, Sylvie slips out of the room, the call of the bridge too tempting to ignore.

When she arrives, Miranda and Katie are across the room, looking over maps of all kinds and talking. Sylvie tries to stay quiet so as not to disturb them. As she walks, she pulls her tablet out of her bag. There's a small beep as the Syl-V's systems downstairs sync over the wi-fi. She slips an earpiece in, smiling. "Vee, you awake down there?" She subvokes, the technique of speaking without sound now familiar to her.

Syl-V responds quickly. "That's one way of putting it. This system feels different."

Sylvie rolls her eyes. "It's exactly the same as back home. It's probably the wi-fi that's a bit slower. You'll get used to it. However..." Her eyes roam over the shiny screens and buttons of the navigation systems. "If you're looking for a different system, I have a bit of an idea."

She moves to the main console, poking around in the interface. "I wanna see what kind of OS this ship's running," she subvokes, "and I think I can get you in to play around with some of it. Vee, you should see the toys Katie's got up here. It's enough to make a girl want to get into sailing."

Vee sounds almost as excited as Sylvie is by this prospect. "If you can get me in, I'd love to take a look at it."

"Ha," Sylvie mouths, already hooking cords to the console and her tablet. "Did you really just say 'if' I can get you in? Oh ye of little faith. Okay, I think we're ready to go..." She activates the exchange. There is a bit of a blip in wireless connectivity as Syl-V pours herself into the new mainframe, but nobody on board seems to notice.

However, the existing navigation software is corrupted in the process.

Not paying any attention to the programmer, Katie helps Miranda arrange the maps. "You know," Katie says, "I've got GPS and mapping software on the onboard computer if you want to do that digitally."

Miranda looks over her shoulder briefly. It's almost as if she can sense that something is going wrong. "Have you seen how many crazy techs we've got on this boat? There's no way our database doesn't get crashed at least once. I'd rather have a physical copy, so long as you don't get any kaiju guts on it."

Makes sense." says Katie. "That's what my professors taught me." She pulls out her tablet to show Miranda the software anyway.

"Vee?" Sylvie subvokes, waiting anxiously to hear back. "What have you got in there?"

"I..." The synthetic voice in her ear trails off. "Well, I think we may have broken something." The words are briefly echoed out of Katie's tablet speakers, although the sound quality is low and it's not obvious what she said.

Katie taps her screen loudly at the strange noise. "What in the vasty, monster-ridden deep?"

Sylvie flinches down behind the console, subvoking at Vee quickly. "Vee, explain. Please. Before Katie finds out it's me and throws me overboard for breaking her ship."

"There..." If a synthesized voice can sound guilty, Vee's does. "…_was_ a navigation system here. But I think the quick install I did may have overwritten it."

Katie stares at the blank screen of her tablet for a few seconds, then switches it off and back on. "Darn thing. You'd better work this time," she mutters. Miranda glances down over her shoulder, looking at the blank screen. Raising an eyebrow, the engineer returns to the maps.

Eleanor walks in, once again managing to interrupt everyone. "Hey, I found the-! Oops, sorry guys," she says, quieting her voice before she's noticed by the women on the floor, or the slightly-frazzled-looking Sylvie who seems to be hiding behind the console.

"Can you re-install the program?" Sylvie subvokes frantically, not noticing Eleanor's entrance. "Pull a control-z or something?"

"I've tried!" Vee sends back, "It's gone. And somehow I have a feeling this system doesn't have backup disks."

Sylvie shrinks down even further, putting her back to the console and hopes the others can't see her. "Vee, we are so dead..."

Eleanor moves over to the table, leaving Sylvie be for right now. "I found the champagne," she says to Katie and Miranda. "What are you working on?"

"She's organizing our maps. I'm trying to get my tablet to work." says Katie.

It, uh." Eleanor frowns slightly. "It looks like you're doing a good job. Probably."

Miranda hums in acknowledgement, pulling out her own tablet and sifting through her notes. She fishes around in the drawers a bit, grabs some tape and string, and starts plotting out the kaiju fight. She's pretty rough with the blue string.

Not seeing much she can do to help at the table, Eleanor wanders over to Sylvie's area. She can tell the other woman is trying not to be noticed, but Eleanor's curiosity gets the best of her.

As she sees Eleanor approaching, Sylvie slides the tablet and cords connecting it to the console behind her back. She tries her best to smile and look not guilty. It doesn't work very well.

Eleanor raises a knowing eyebrow. "And I suppose you're...getting acquainted with things too, hmm?" she asks. It's a fairly rhetorical question at this point.

"Oh, yeah," Sylvie says, laughing nervously. "Just... you know. Getting acquainted with the system and such. Techie stuff."

"Right. Techie stuff." She's fighting not to smile, lest it seem mocking. "Well, let me know if you need any help with things."

Without thinking, Sylvie mutters, "I think it's a little more help than you'd be able to give..."

At this, Eleanor outright grins. The expression is perhaps a bit creepy, as her mother would have said. 'Don't show so many teeth, dear, you look like a shark.' But she's not thinking about that now.

Aside from whatever's glitching Katie's iPad, Miranda thinks they're probably ready to cast off. Not wanting to leave the bridge, she pulls out her phone and messages Seiko.

**Miranda:** _Seiko, everyone's on the bridge and there's no way I'm getting out of here without a fuss. Think you can handle casting us off?_

Seiko is still below decks in the cabin when his phone buzzes. Eyes closed, he's trying to convince himself that he's in a cramped hotel rather than on a ship, but it isn't working well. He cracks an eye at the phone, frowning deeply as he checks the message.

**Seiko:** _How do you have this number?_  
**Seiko:** _Please don't text me.  
_**Miranda: **_Does it matter? Can you just go untie us from the dock?_

Seiko scowls, but decides to go up to the deck and see what exactly she wants him to do. He has no idea what he's doing though.

**Seiko:** _What, precisely, am I supposed to be doing anyway? Do I just cut this rope here?  
_**Seiko:** _Update: I cut the rope  
_**Seiko:** _-This message contains an image- [ . ]_

Miranda looks at her phone again. Her eyes widen and she stands, stumbling a bit. "I'll be right back," she mutters as she walks out the door.

**Miranda:** _Stop  
_**Miranda:** _Just… gimme a second_

Working together and texting back and forth, Miranda and Seiko manage to get the ship ready to pull out of the harbor. Miranda texts that she's heading back up to the bridge to take the helm. Seiko reads the message, scowling at his phone.

Then he tosses it into the ocean. _How did Miranda get that number anyway?_

Miranda returns to the bridge, hair mussed and muttering under her breath. She takes the helm and drives them out into open water. At last, the ship is underway for Port Stephens, where the Kaiju attack took place.

As the dock grows farther and farther away, Seiko quietly wonders if it was too late to jump in after his phone and swim for shore. He attempts to have a threatening stare off with the fact that the ocean is now moving. Unsurprisingly, he loses and resigns himself to returning to his room.

Back on the bridge, Eleanor feels a lurch underfoot just as she was about to ask Sylvie about her suspicious behavior. She glances at Miranda at the helm before turning back to her nervous friend.

Feeling the engines hum to life and the ship start moving, Sylvie takes the opportunity of Eleanor's turned back to quickly subvoke, "Please tell me you're not the reason the ship's moving now, Vee."

Vee responds, "Someone's trying to access the nav system from the helm! I'm just trying to do what the commands are demanding!"

Katie continues to try to understand why her program keeps giving her error messages. She swore she checked everything out before and nothing had been wrong. The sluggish response and strange glitches are baffling.

On the other end, Vee gives an update to Sylvie's earpiece: "There's a tablet trying to access the deleted software. I'm managing to fake the nav system's interface, but I don't think it's going to hold up under much scrutiny." At the AI's words, Sylvie's fake smile to Eleanor becomes even more forced.

Finally, frustrated that the issue is not going away, Katie walks across the room to where Eleanor and Sylvie are. "I think we have a problem with the navigational software." She gives Sylvie a pointed look. "Fix it."

Sylvie looks between the two of them, trying to come up with an answer that won't get her in trouble. She runs a hand through her hair, then slowly pulls her tablet and cords out from behind her. "Um… well, about that... I think Vee might have accidentally... um, deleted the nav system?"

Eleanor put out a hand to steady herself, in more ways than one. "So we're headed somewhere, then, hmm? Does anyone happen to know how we can find out _where_ that would be?"

Miranda checks her compass, moving the ship into deeper water. This is exactly why she didn't want to have to depend on the computer. "Well, we're headed north along the coast for now, so it's the right direction at least."

Katie takes a moment to process what Sylvie just said. Then she says, very quietly, "Fix. It." The words are a command, not a request. "Now."

"_Can_ it be fixed?" Eleanor asks, not ungently.

"Well... Vee's kinda, trying," Sylvie says, wincing. "But I think it might be gone for good. Vee's in there now, trying to work the nav system herself, but she doesn't really have the programming or code to pull it off. Which is to say... I don't know anything about ships and neither does she."

Miranda sighs. "And this is why I brought the maps."

"Vee knows how to… uh, run the GPS?" Sylvie offered sheepishly.

"Is she at least hooked into our sensors?" Miranda asks. Sailing without those makes her nervous. "And if so, does she know how to work them?"

"Vee?" Sylvie asks, aloud this time. "In case you didn't hear, the jig is up. You wanna talk through the speaker system now?"

The AI's voice fills the room a moment later. "Speaker access confirmed. I apologize for the nav system. I didn't realize that my install was overwriting anything. As for the sensors, I'm getting data from them, but it's raw without code to filter it. It may take me some time to figure out how to decipher and display it for you."

Miranda nods, locking in their speed and course before leaving the helm. "Alright then. If you could devote some of your processing power to that, it'd help me out, Vee. Now then," she heads to the table of maps, gesturing at her set up there. "I've taken the liberty of mapping out the course of the Kaiju battle in question; blue string's Kaiju, red string's Jaeger. Based on what I can see, our best bet is to search in this general area," she says, gesturing to a section of water about five knots off the coast.

Sylvie walks over to the map, taking a picture with her tablet and sending it to Vee's hard drive. "Vee, if you've got processing power to spare, see if you can't overlay that with your GPS. I'm gonna go grab my laptop from below deck and see if I can't help you write up some code to interpret that sensor data."

She leaves her tablet on the bridge with the others and runs downstairs to grab the laptop. While she's in the lab, she checks Vee's output levels. The data spikes look rather worrisome, and she puts a hand near the fan, hoping the cooling systems can handle the strain. From what she can tell, Vee's constructing rudimentary code to try to funnel the data into a more manageable form, but coding and processing at the same time is nearly using up her available memory completely.

As she grabs the laptop, she pauses. Then she tucks her Pons unit under her arm as well.

**Scene 4**

Realizing that there isn't much for her to do until the problem gets solved, Katie decides to check on Seiko. She climbs down the stairs into the main quarters and living area, looking around to make sure he is not getting into any trouble.

Seiko, however, is in his room, organizing it and checking for cameras. He pauses, recognizing Katie's footsteps in the hall. Seeing as she's the person who is actually paying him, he figures he probably shouldn't ignore her and pretend he's not here. Besides, it's not like there's many other places he would be. She'd come in anyway. He sits on the bed and grabs a book he found under the floor, flipping open to a random page without looking at it.

Katie knocks on the door of the 'captain's' quarters. "Are you doing ok in there, Seiko?"

"Of course Miss," he says, "Please do not worry. Thank you for the quarters. They're pretty luxurious."

"You'd better be staying out of trouble in there."

"What do you expect me to get up to on a ship? There's nothing to steal and no one to kill." There's only a slight tone of bitterness at those words. "The easiest path is to stay under the radar. So to speak." Seiko barely stifles an unflattering laugh.

"Alright then," says Katie. "Just wanted to make sure you were settled in ok."

"Uh huh."

"Can I come in and get my things?"

"It's your room, Katie," he says flatly.

As Katie walks in, Seiko puts the book down as if he's just stopped reading it. And… finally gets a good look at its cover, which depicts two female characters in a rather amorous embrace. He immediately turns a rather bright shade of red.

Katie spots the book, is momentarily mortified, then tries to _casually_ take her bag of clothes from the fairly spacious closet. She hadn't unpacked them, but was now wishing she had.

Seiko simply stares at the book in shock for a moment, then as unaffected as he can manage to face, just… pushes it back under the bed. "I... I wasn't... I just grabbed a book and... it was…certainly a book."

Katie isn't quite sure how to respond. It is _her _book that he was holding. She feels almost as embarrassed as Seiko does.

After an awkward silence, Seiko scowls and pushes himself off the bed. "I'm going upstairs."

After he leaves, Katie makes sure no one else has come downstairs, picks up the book, and stuffs it into her bag. Then she collects a few other things from her cabin and puts those in the bag also. She leaves a single well-used book on the nightstand: _Essays on Xenobiology_ by Newton Geiszler.

After 'tidying up' the captain's cabin, Katie goes into the crew quarters, selects a bunk, and throws her duffle bag full of clothes and well, "things" onto it.

Then she heads back upstairs.

**Scene 5**

Back on the bridge, Eleanor decides to try to help Miranda study the maps. "What are you looking for, exactly?"

"I wish I knew," Miranda said. "This would be a whole lot easier if anyone would tell me what we're looking for. Unfortunately the only leads I have are the video Katie sent me and the increased PPDC patrols in this area. I don't know what it was that fell, but it was sizable. And where there's security, there's salvage."

"Increased security means more risk for us, too," Eleanor noted. "Do you know what kind of stealth systems"-she tries not to giggle, the rusted sloop hardly looks like a spy-worthy boat-"we have?"

As they're talking, Sylvie re-enters the room, ducking her head in embarrassment when she sees the two others. She quickly moves over to the console, trying to stay out of the way. She should have known that hooking Syl-V was a bad idea, but now it's up to her to fix it.

She goes back to subvocalizing to Vee, not wanting to bother Miranda and Eleanor. "Hey, Vee? I could just try to write the code on my own, but it looked like you were nearly frying yourself from memory output. Let me take some of the load. I've got the Pons."

Vee's response has buzzes and static interspersed with her words. "That... might be good. Can you... code in the Drift?"

"I can try. Gotta be better than nothing," Sylvie subvokes, fitting the Pons on her head and connecting it to Vee's tablet.

"Warning," Vee says brokenly. "Ship... is not as fun... as a Jaeger."

Sylvie sighs. "Well, you should be able to handle it once you're not trying to deal with raw data. Okay, I'm initiating the neural handshake."

Eleanor notices Sylvie's return, and she glances over to the console to check on her anyway. She makes a mental note to keep an eye on the programmer while she Drifts. The process is not always cut-and-dry.

Miranda continues without looking up, answering Eleanor's question. "Most of our 'stealth systems'," she throws in air quotes for emphasis, "rely on our appearance. The PPDC is looking for high tech salvage ships, spy-era stuff. Sonar jammers, high speed engines, your basic Bond Boat. The list is absurdly long; something about moths at one point, you should look it over if you have the chance."

She catches herself, getting back on track. "Those are the boats they'll be stopping and searching. A rusty old transport boat, on the other hand... Heck, we might even be able to talk them into escorting us back to shore."

Across the room, Sylvie closes her eyes as she activates the drift, feeling Vee - and the ship pour into her head. Vee holds back the data for a few moments while Sylvie gets situated, but she can't keep it in for long. She grimaces as the unfiltered numbers flood her head, and for a few moments, she just lets them wash over her, not able to fight back.

Finally, she grows accustomed enough to open her eyes and pull her laptop over. She can feel Vee trying to process the data into meaningful forms, and patterns are starting to emerge. All they need to do is figure out how to write code that will filter it for them. She starts typing, adding to the code that Vee has already started to throw together and the two work in perfect sync.

Eleanor wrinkles her nose at the mention of lists. She has never been very fond of paperwork. Or moths, for that matter. But the idea of flying stealth by staying out in the open is one she is rather familiar with.

"Alright, so no active stealth. Not surprising. But passive...I like that." She smiles briefly. "Do you know how obvious we would be to, say, a PPDC team? Should we seriously encrypt our signals?"

"Hm. We should probably come up with some sort of code amongst ourselves," Miranda says. "No 'look at how many pounds of kaiju chunks we found today' emails, but active encryption would just draw attention to us. They're going to be reading our messages anyway, so just give them what they expect."

"That's more along the lines of what I was thinking," Eleanor says. "We should have Syl-V help us create some generic ciphers, and one-time pads if we need them."

"That way we could write whatever we wanted, with a little extra code added in. Any of our laptops could handle it."

Sylvie and Vee both speak together, causing a somewhat strange echo with the speakers. "Unable to run decryption software at this time. Interpreting code has top priority. All other coding projects and processes are relegated to _pending_." Normally the two aren't quite so zombie-like in the Drift, but the raw code deluge is sapping them a bit.

Eleanor slowly turns to Sylvie and Syl-V on the other side of the room. "Right…" she says, drawing out the word. "I'll, uh, let you two get back to work, then. Miranda, any ideas?"

"I actually have a program that can handle that sort of thing. I can hook 'er into the network, and our messages will automatically be edited." She glanced up, waving a hand. "I'm sure Vee's already got a lot of other tasks, and this isn't my first time encoding messages." She doesn't mention that her "program" just happens to be another version of Vee herself.

Eleanor's lips curve in an expression that isn't a smile. "I know what you mean," she says through her teeth. Then she relaxes a bit. "But thanks."

After a few more minutes, the two drifters finish the code, and Syl-V integrates it into her new, framework navigating software. Immediately, the overwhelming flow of data stops, the program turning it into easily understandable figures.

Sighing in relief at the sudden absence of the data onslaught, Sylvie decides to drop out of the drift. Vee agrees with the decision, as she's now able to handle the load on her own. Sylvie disables the Pons, taking it off and setting it beside her. She shakes her head, trying to clear the lingering after-drift sensation.

At this point, Seiko wanders up into the conversation looking slightly flushed. He hopes the others will just think it's seasickness. _Seasickness can make a person look like their blushing, right?_

Hearing the shuffling from the other end of the room, Eleanor walks over to him. "How are you feeling?"

"I-" He pauses. "Absolutely nothing"

She huffs a laugh. "That's probably better than the alternative."

Sylvie sets her laptop aside, and pushes herself to her feet. "Okay, I think that code should work for now. I might whip up something more elegant later if I've got the time. We ought to be able use the sensors without trouble now though."

"That's good news!" Eleanor claps her hands in glee.

Sylvie rubs her head slightly. "Remind me not to drift with raw data ever again though. That was... disorienting. Vee was right: not as fun as a Jaeger." Then she grimaces. "Though... the last time I piloted an actual Jaeger it was... well."

"We know," Seiko says flatly, not looking up at her. "We watch the news."

"Yeah, it didn't look...fun," Eleanor adds.

"It was fairly fun to watch," Seiko says.

Sylvie feels her cheeks go hot in mortification. "I'm just going to... go pretend to press some buttons over here and try to forget the fact that I brought that up."

Miranda shifts in place. "Alright, since things seem to have stabilized here, I'm going to go look into getting my program up and running. I'll be back in a few minutes; no one let Seiko touch the helm." With that, she walked out of the bridge.

"I think we can manage that," Eleanor mutters, eyeing Seiko wryly.


End file.
